When Dell put up its IdeaStorm community-feedback site, the company was surprised by the strong response in favor of shipping personal computers with Linux. The PC company then announced that it would offer Ubuntu Linux on select systems, and as of yesterday, they are taking orders. Ubuntu Linux is now available on the XPS 410n high-end desktop system at USD 849 (compared with USD 899 for the same machine with Windows installed), the E520n desktop at USD 599, and the E1505n notebook at USD 599. For now, the Ubuntu systems will only be available to customers in the United States. Availability is expected 'in the coming weeks' according to an announcement given on May 1, but Dell.com lists a shipping time of three to five days.

It's worth noting that most of those issues are only valid with the newer X1xxx+ cards. If you get an older one like the X300-800 series things work pretty well OOTB with open source drivers. Of course, at that point you may as well just go with the cheaper Intel chip since performance isn't much better...

There is a work around. PC-BSD work out of the box with newer ATI drivers. I'm not sure how they do it, but get them to work.

I'm not saying that the performance doesn't make me want to shoot myself in the head to get the pain to stop, but it does work well enough that the OS should boot and end users should be able to download the correct drivers.

But yeah, until AMD releases their open source drivers the best option is to use Intel or Nvidia.